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Amongst these characters which distinguish beings, 

 we discover some that are more or less general. Whence 

 we derive our distributions into classes, genera, and spe- 

 cies. But there are always between two classes, atid 

 two like genera, mean productions, which seem not to 

 belong more to one than to the other, but to connect 

 them both. 



The polypus links the vegetable to the animal* 

 The flying squirrel unites the birds to the quadru- 

 ped. The ape bears affinity to the quadruped and 

 the man. 



But if there is nothing cut off in nature, it is evident 

 that the distributions we make are not her's. Those 

 we form are purely nominal, relative to our necessities 

 and the bounds of our knowledge. Those intelligences 

 which are superior to us, discover perhaps more varieties 

 between two individuals which we range under the same 

 species, than we do between two individuals of distant 

 genera. 



So that these intelligences see the scale of beings all 

 composing one single consequence, which has for its first 

 term an atom, and for its last the most exalted seraph. 



We may then suppose in the scale of our globe as 

 many steps as we Know there are species. The eighteen 

 or twenty thousand species of plants which compose our 

 herbals, are therefore eighteen or twenty thousand steps 

 of this celestial ladder. 



And there is not a single plant amongst these, which 

 does not perhaps nourish one, or more species of ani- 

 mals. These animals harbour or provide nourishment 

 for others in their turn. They are so many little worlds 

 comprized in others that are still smaller. 



Simple produces compound. The molecule forms 

 the fibre, the fibre the vessel, the vessel the organ, the 

 organ the body. 



The scale of nature then is constructed by passing 

 D 6 



